28 Days

by David Safier

  “Promise.”

  He didn’t believe me.

  “At the orphanage,” he said, smiling, “I always check to make sure the children haven’t crossed their fingers behind their backs when they promise anything.”

  “I’m not a child!”

  “Sometimes you are.”

  There were moments when I hated the way he pretended to be years older than me instead of only seven months.

  “If you call me a child one more time, I’ll go home right away.”

  “All right, then,” he said. “I want you to stay. But do you promise?”

  He looked at me closely.

  “Of course I do,” I said with a firm voice. I even gave him a little innocent smile to make it all the more convincing.

  Daniel hesitated, then he nodded. He’d decided to trust me. Sometimes, of the two of us, he was the naive child. Which made him all the more lovable.

  “I must get back to the orphanage and help with lunch,” he said, but he didn’t want to leave just yet. I gave him a soft little kiss on the lips, so that he would be able to drag himself away. And he smiled, said goodbye by kissing me back, and walked off placated and convinced that I was on my way home to my family in Miła Street. But I was on my way to look for Ruth. At the infamous Britannia Hotel.

  8

  Even in broad daylight, the neon sign was lit up in red lights. The letter H for Hotel flickered on and off. A burly bouncer stood beneath the H. He wore a long trench coat, despite the summer weather, trying to look like a tough gangster. But he was just a simple thug who had to follow the real ghetto bosses’ orders—men Ruth went to bed with every night. It was the bouncer’s job to make sure not everyone got into the bar-slash-brothel. Only people with a lot of money who were prepared to spend it on booze and women were allowed inside. And people like me, I hoped, who had a friend who worked there.

  I walked straight up to him and said, “Good afternoon, I’m Ruth’s friend.”

  The bouncer pretended not to notice me.

  That wasn’t quite the reaction I had been hoping for. “I want to see her,” I said.

  “And pigs might fly.”

  A bouncer and comedian. A rare combination. Not a good one.

  “Ruth is expecting me,” I lied.

  The guy treated me like I wasn’t there and stared past me toward two SS soldiers who were walking along the other side of the street. They had shouldered their guns and were eating ice cream.

  I caught my breath. Even though the Germans were concentrating on their ice cream and not taking any notice of us, I was still afraid of them.

  I was no Rubinstein who could laugh at them in the face. No one was a real Rubinstein except for Rubinstein.

  The bouncer nodded at the soldiers. They nodded back, bored. This simple exchange of greeting was no surprise to me. The Germans got a portion of the winnings from the Jewish racketeers, and of course the soldiers went to the brothel, too. They might be the “master race” but they could still screw a Jew. Did that mean that Ruth did it with Germans, too…?

  … I didn’t want to know.

  Although the bouncer made an effort to appear relaxed, I could see the fear in his eyes. Since the “Night of Blood,” SS patrols shot Jews for no reason whatsoever. Just for fun. The gangsters were no exception. Neither were children. Only yesterday, three children had been murdered in front of the Bersohn und Bauman hospital. One of the women from Kraków had told me—oh yes, things had got so bad that our devout flatmates had actually started talking to the likes of me. They were scared. The children had just been sitting in front of the hospital, and then the SS men had shot all three of them out of the blue. When I heard this, all I wanted was to keep Hannah locked away in our hovel in Miła Street forever.

  When the soldiers moved on, the bouncer released a silent but perceptible breath. I realized that his fear was my chance. I took a step toward him and drew myself up to my full height—I only just reached his chin—looked up at him and grinned. “You know how Rubinstein gets his food?”

  I managed to catch his attention. So much so that he stopped ignoring me, and said, “Of course I do—what are you talking about?”

  “I could start shouting that Hitler should be shot,” I said, grinning broadly. “Or that he is making love to his dog.”

  “You … you wouldn’t do that!” The fear was back in his eyes.

  “I was Rubinstein’s apprentice,” I laughed, and took a few wild leaps into the street just like the ghetto clown.

  The bouncer had no idea what to make of me.

  I landed back in front of his feet and laughed at him, “All the same.”

  My performance wasn’t very convincing, but it didn’t have to be. It was good enough. The guy didn’t want to take any risks.

  “So,” he asked cautiously, “is Ruth really a friend of yours?”

  “That’s why I said so.”

  “Oh well, it can’t do any harm to visit a friend.”

  “No, it can’t,” I smiled.

  I went past him, up the couple of steps, and entered the Britannia Hotel.

  9

  I walked past an unattended cloakroom and went through a heavy red velvet curtain into the dimly lit bar area. Apparently, daylight was not wanted here. The atmosphere was smoky and the furniture was pretty shabby considering the amount of money customers spent here. One of the three chandeliers hung crooked from the ceiling, the top of the wooden bar was cracked and splintered, and the tablecloths were so dirty they appeared not to have been changed since before the war. But the men who were drinking vodka at this time of the afternoon hadn’t come for the decor. They were here for the young women who were paid to flirt and drink with them. The Britannia girls were really beautiful; none of them were gaunt and hungry like I was. They had womanly curves, and, of course, they were wearing makeup. Most of them were definitely wearing too much makeup, but one redhead sitting at a table not far from the entrance had an elegant shade of red lipstick and rouge. I’d have loved makeup like that, but there was no way I’d ever be able to afford that kind of luxury. I’d have felt jealous if she’d been wearing more than a negligee and black frilly panties, and if she hadn’t been in the process of being groped by a man with flabby hands who was kneading her breasts like wads of dough.

  Instead of making me feel claustrophobic, the sorid atmosphere lifted my spirits. A female singer, accompanied by a bored-looking pianist, sang in a smoky voice:

  Night and day, you are the one, only you beneath the moon or under the sun …

  American music!

  It was forbidden everywhere, but they were playing it here. The music transported me out of the Britannia Hotel, out of the ghetto, out of Poland. Away from war, hunger, and suffering. Across the Atlantic to New York.

  In my fantasy, I was dancing down Broadway with Daniel, whirling down the street, like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the musicals. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t dance in real life, had never learned how, and would probably fall over my own two feet if I tried. But then I remembered the argument a few moments ago and realized that Daniel wouldn’t want to dance with me on Broadway or anywhere else if he found out that I was in the Britannia Hotel at this very moment. All at once, the imaginary dancer turned into Stefan.

  I think of you day and night, night and day …

  I kept telling myself to stop thinking about Stefan, but it never worked. He kept coming to mind all the time, and there was nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t fair to Daniel. I tried to order dancing Stefan to turn back into Daniel, but he refused.

  The singer stopped singing and the pianist played the final chords of the song, but my daydream wasn’t over yet. I was lying in Stefan’s arms.

  With all my might, I pushed Stefan away and ran to Daniel, who was wearing normal clothes now, standing in front of a cinema on Broadway where City Lights was showing. I hugged Daniel as tightly as I could. Not just because I felt guilty, but because he was my only hope. He was my li
fe; he was the one I loved. And I said the words I couldn’t ever say in real life, because I was ashamed of myself and because they were true, “I love you!”

  “You’re lost in thought, Mira.” Someone laughed beside me as the piano player started to play “I Get a Kick Out of You.” Ruth stood beside me, wearing a pink negligee, black fishnet stockings, a black suspender belt, and so much makeup that she looked older than sixteen. What the heck. Hardly anyone ever looked younger than they really were in the ghetto.

  “But the question is,” Ruth said, still laughing, “what on earth are you doing here?”

  As I slowly came to, she nodded at a waiter who was whistling along to “I Get a Kick Out of You.” He immediately poured her a glass of champagne. Or was it just cheap sparkling wine? I knew absolutely nothing about drinking. Apart from a glass of red wine at Passover, I’d never drunk any alcohol. Whatever she was drinking, it wasn’t her first glass this afternoon, judging by her breath and the rather delirious tone of her laughter. “Mira, you aren’t looking for work here, are—?”

  “God, no!” I interrupted her before she could finish asking. It was too awful to contemplate.

  “Good! Because you are too ugly, you know.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I replied.

  “So what do you want?” Ruth asked, and sipped her drink.

  “I want to join a smugglers’ gang!”

  Ruth choked on her champagne.

  While she coughed away, I asked, “Can’t you introduce me to someone who can help?”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Please. For friendship’s sake?” I asked, just in case.

  I was the only person from the old days who still spoke to her. She didn’t want to lose me as a friend. So she replied:

  “For friendship’s sake.”

  10

  Shmuel Asher’s mustache was so thick, a dozen mice could have hidden in it. His face was covered in scars. He was a powerful man, and it was safe to assume that the men who had inflicted those scars ended up looking far worse once he’d finished with them. If they had lived.

  Asher was the leader of a group of crooks and thieves called Chompe, and Ruth was his favorite whore. In fact, he was said to truly love her. She’d told me this, bursting with pride, and I’d felt awful. She was so gullible. It was well known that Asher and many other men preferred underage girls.

  I was in no danger of being a girl Asher might fancy. I was too bony. We sat at a table in a corner of the bar. Asher had his back to the wall like some desperado in a western who worried someone would shoot him from behind.

  The singer was drinking at the bar while the piano man tinkled the keys softly and Ruth slid up and down Asher’s lap, pressing her cheek to his. The huge man ignored her attentions and asked me: “How could you possibly be of any use to me?”

  “I’m an experienced smuggler,” I said, trying to sound confident.

  “What sort of experience?”

  Ruth suddenly stared at me. If I told Asher about the graveyard, he would know that she had betrayed one of his smuggling routes to me.

  Her fear was contagious. I touched the tablecloth. My fingers stroked the little burns in the fabric and touched crumbs of food. I managed to calm down a bit.

  “I climb over the wall,” I lied. I’d never climbed over the wall in my life.

  Ruth was relieved I hadn’t given her away.

  She smooched Asher’s face as he stared at me. “Where do you climb over?”

  “Usually at Stawki Street, not far from Pokorna Street,” I lied some more.

  “There are less dangerous places.”

  “There aren’t any safe places,” I said.

  “The safe places are where we have bribed the guards,” he grinned.

  “You bribe the guards and I can’t smuggle on my own anymore—that’s why I want to join you,” I said. This part was true.

  “It’s pretty brave to walk in here and demand to be a member of my gang.”

  There was no way I could tell from his expression or the tone of his voice whether he was impressed by my boldness or offended by my behavior.

  “We could use someone new. I’ve lost a few men in the past couple of weeks.”

  He said a few, but I knew that he meant he’d lost many men. So this increased my chances of getting work. But it also worried me—in fact, it really scared me. It wasn’t even possible for the members of the infamous Chompe gang to survive as smugglers these days.

  “But tell me,” Shmuel asked as the waiter brought him a cup of thick, tarry coffee. “Why should I choose you of all people to join my gang?”

  “Because it’ll pay off,” I replied.

  “A lot of people say that,” he said. “Give me another reason.”

  I tried to think of one. What could I offer the king of thieves?

  “Because…,” I stammered.

  “Because?” he asked, and I was at a loss for words.

  “Because,” Ruth spoke up all of a sudden, and stroked Asher’s cheek, “I’ll be especially nice to you.”

  “You have to be anyway,” he replied.

  “But it’s even better when I love you.”

  That convinced Asher. He and Ruth seemed to have something else in mind when they used the word love than I did. He beamed at Ruth, took a sip of his coffee, and said, “Welcome to the Chompe gang!”

  “Thank you!” I said. I looked at him briefly and then turned to Ruth. She was the one I was really thanking.

  “You can start tonight,” Asher said. “At four thirty a.m. At the corner of Zimna Street and Żelazna Street.”

  Tonight?

  It was sooner than I had expected. Or wanted. I would have to climb over the wall in just a few hours’ time. And try not to get killed in the process.

  11

  I’d entered the Britannia Hotel a starving girl, I walked out a starving member of a gang. The bouncer looked at me skeptically but thought it safer not to speak to me again. And he was clearly relieved to see me leave without any more Rubinstein antics.

  The sun blinded me and it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the daylight. Now I could start to relax, more or less—even the stench of the ghetto air seemed fresh in comparison to the smoky atmosphere of the bar. And I suddenly realized: Asher hadn’t told me what I was supposed to smuggle. Or the names of the men I would meet at the wall.

  For a moment, I thought about going back to find out more details. But Asher wasn’t the sort of person I wanted to annoy. So I decided to take my sawdust bread and head home. Though not just yet.

  Whenever I had the chance, I took a detour through the book market. I enjoyed losing myself in the boxes and suitcases of books for sale: works by the likes of Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, or Erich Kästner, all authors forbidden by the Nazis. And better yet, there were even books in English. I’d been able to teach myself some English using books, in case I ever got to America.

  I’d started with picture books like Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, and Winnie-the-Pooh. But by now, I could read whole detective novels. My favorites were the Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels by Dorothy L. Sayers, even if she could only transport me as far as England in my mind and not all the way to New York.

  I stopped when I came to a large trunk leaning against the curb. It looked as if it had traveled the world more times than I ever would, as far as I could tell from all the travel stickers from overseas stuck to its sides. The trunk was full of English-language books. And it belonged to a skinny man with a thin, wispy beard and bleak eyes. I rummaged through, and amid all the highbrow titles that I wouldn’t have understood even if they’d been in Polish, I found a Lord Peter Wimsey novel called Murder Must Advertise.

  Now all I had to do was bargain well enough to get the book for free. My chances weren’t all that bad. Books were one of the few goods in the ghetto that got cheaper by the day. I looked at the bookseller. This man probably hadn’t managed to sell a single book so far today. And he was b
ound to be hungry, just like everyone else. I showed him the book. “I’ll give you a piece of bread for it,” I said. The man was far too weak to bargain. He fingered his beard and nodded. I was just about to pull the loaf of bread out of my bag and break off a bit when I saw Stefan.

  He was hurrying along the sidewalk past the bookseller and didn’t look in our direction. For a second, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. But by then he had already turned the corner and disappeared into a side street. I quickly stuffed the bread back into the bag, pushed my way past the seller, and ignored him when he said, “—What about a piece of your bread?” I followed Stefan.

  Stefan had reached the end of the street and disappeared round the corner. Wherever he was headed, he was in a hurry. I started to run but couldn’t call out. Stefan wasn’t even his real name. And I was afraid that I’d make him run away. I knew practically nothing about him, but I had a feeling that he was acting illegally.

  I charged round the next corner without calling and found myself trapped in a narrow, empty lane. It was blocked at one end by the fence that sealed off the Jewish cemetery. Stefan was nowhere to be seen. Did he go over the fence?

  I ran to the end of the lane and stared through the mesh, but I couldn’t see anyone in the graveyard. I thought about climbing the fence. But then I’d risk getting caught by the Germans without a pass. I wanted to see Stefan, but I didn’t want to risk my neck for the sake of a meeting. It was bad enough having to climb over the wall later tonight. Damn! What had I got myself into? The thought of climbing over all the broken glass and barbed wire made me sick.

  After I looked through the fence again, I gave up and walked back down the lane. I kept turning round, hoping to see him. But it didn’t happen. I started to think that he hadn’t climbed the fence at all. So where did he go?

  I stopped, realizing I was really thirsty. My new boss hadn’t offered me anything at the Britannia Hotel. A glass of water would be good right now. Or apple juice—imagine that! The taste of fruit and water all mixed together would be heaven. The only kind of heaven I could imagine these days.